Interview, Terry Summers

That was when the big cattle boom came and everybody wanted a Hughes 300 or anything else to muster with.

That changed so that a year ago it was starting to taper off and suddenly there was a bit of a glut of pilots. So we have changed our cycle of how many pilots we produce more in terms of how many jobs there are.

JS: Is that a short-term variation?

TS: This year will tell accurately. We have two full-time instructors working but on a one instructor basis, we would run six courses a year, so that is 12 to 14 students a year on average. That would peak at maybe 18 and down to a bottom of maybe eight, depending on the yearly requirements.

JS: You only have about two students per instructor per course?

TS: Yes. That is the optimum. You can push to two and a half or three but it is best to have two, mainly because there is so much ground school. There is a great requirement for a one-to-one situation in helicopter instruction. For that reason, it will be many years before helicopter flight schools have evolved to the audio-visual technique of teaching now common in fixed-wing flying schools, where most of the work is done by the student in a controlled syllabus environment with very little instructor input. That cannot apply to helicopter training because there is such a broad range of subjects to be covered and so many facets of the whole helicopter operation to discuss in detail with a student.

The other factor that sorts everybody out is the cost. At $3 per minute in the air or $180 an hour, you have to really do the choreography on the course by way of ground school preparation.

JS: What is the average number of hours to a licence?

TS: It depends on their fixed-wing base level. The Department of Transport will give a dispensation against a fixed-wing licence as to how many hours they need for a helicopter licence.

If a person has no licence he needs a minimum of 85 hours to get to commercial helicopter licence standard. If he has a private fixed-wing licence that is reduced to 60 hours. A commercial fixed-wing licence is 40 hours. These are all minimum hours. There are five or six different courses we can run depending on fixed wing background.

JS: And the average number of hours taken overall?

TS: Our most successful course is to take a fixed-wing private pilot through to a commercial helicopter. That is the most common. There are 95 hours of formal ground school plus associated briefing and debriefing and a minimum of 60 hours flying. It is a fairly heavy five-day-a-week eight-week course. We prefer a full-time course because there is much better continuity in learning.

JS: Can somebody walk in off the street with the money in his hand and walk out eight weeks later with a licence?

TS: No. Because if he is looking for a commercial licence he has to do those department commercial papers as well. They are only held three or four times a year. He has to program himself around that. They can delay him extensively. I am talking about the guy with a private fixed-wing licence who has secured a minimum of three commercial theory subjects under his belt from the department prior to starting our course.

We take him through a further three commercial subjects plus some of our own we throw in like airmanship, field operations, technical syllabus, helicopter air legislation – extra information which he is going to use.

JS: What does it cost for the average person all up?

TS: On those minimum hours, plus $1200 for a ground school package he is looking at over $16,000 minimum from off the street, to a private fixed-wing licence, and a commercial helicopter licence.

JS: A realistic time basis for that?

TS: A minimum of six weeks for his private licence fixed wing. The time taken to secure those three theory subjects, which are fixed-wing and rotary-wing compatible, might take three to six months, depending on how he slots in. But he can go off and do a job while he is doing night study or whatever. You are looking at full-time instruction of 14 to 15 weeks.

JS: The average person would take six months or more?

TS: Yes. It is a long-term project. Off the street we get the whole kaleidoscope of Joe Citizens who have aspirations to go mustering low level in a helicopter as soon as possible.

From when they start that initial inquiry to the girls in the front office, to when they talk to us in more detail after getting the brochure, to when they go for that initial flight test, then program themselves on a course, is probably six months. We would like it to be that long so that they have had six months minimum of it stewing over in their mind.

JS: What is the attrition rate, after that? What sort of people do you get coming in for a start?

TS: For a start, from their telephone inquiry, when brochures are sent out, we get the entire spectrum of age, from 16 through to 45 or older, from wanting to do it as a career to wanting to have a private licence to take the wife and kids away when in their late forties they are semi-retired maybe.

JS: Are there many private helicopter licences?

TS: It is growing. It is still much less a proportion than fixed-wing counterparts, but it is growing, whether they buy a Hughes 300, or a Robinson, or maybe even a turbine. Doctors, and this sort of thing, to have an offset against their income and also they may be looking at some limited application to their job. I think it will be five years before that becomes a more common situation.

People operating their own private machines pose a lot of problems. That fellow is doing only a private licence, probably not flying very much so his skill level does not stay at the right level and is probably more likely to be a hazard to man and beast than the current fixed-wing counterpart who is doing that – flying half a dozen times a year and not really current at any one stage. He is a problem.

We prefer to orientate to a career guy who is going to fly all the time.

From the inquiries we get at the start, probably only one to two per cent would come to training at some stage. They might not come back for two or three years.

We would talk to probably 20 to 30 per cent of the initial inquiries. That takes hours. There is a lot of information they have to be made aware of.

JS: This covers financial, technical . . . ?

TS: The whole industry. General aviation helicopters. What is in it for them when they get a licence and get a job. How much it is going to cost. What are the pitfalls? Where is the industry going. How many operators are there out there and are they going to be abused by the operators, or will they get paid properly? Will they have to work in the bush. We cannot paint a very pretty picture there. It is not all that pretty any more.

A low-time helicopter pilot has worked hard and paid a lot of money to get a licence. That is just the start. He has a licence to go out and learn and I am afraid, a licence to go out and be pushed around a bit.

JS: Most of them go bush and work for keep?

TS: That is right. If he goes bush he has to more than likely get into mustering which, and here is the paradox, is the roughest flying going in Australia.

JS: With a fairly high attrition rate, on machines at any rate?

TS: Yes, I must stress on machines. It is very rare that you have fatalities. In fact the only one I heard of in 1981 was on a geo survey job. Out of 22 mustering and geo survey prangs, the only fatality was on geo survey.

JS: Is there a most common cause of accidents in that environment?

TS: It seems to be into broad heading areas. One is fatigue, in the mustering area. How many hours of sleep do you get a night in 40-degree heat, living in shocking conditions, versus how long you have been going through the season without a decent rest.

But the main area is pilot-responsible maintenance or the lack thereof. The daily maintenance. The pilot is out in the bush by himself for a month mustering. He is probably not that experienced. He has been mustering for three or six months or so but by the nature of the industry is not going to be supervised as we would like him to be supervised for the first two or three years. That is when the problems occur.

Coming back to training, it is very rare that we would lose a person once he starts because it is pointless. He has paid so much money and we start losing money hand over fist if he only lasts half the course because that first half is so heavily loaded with ground school which is non-cost-effective. It is not until the nav phase at the end that we start to get our head above water on the cost side.

So we go out of our way to pick the right person to start with. Even if he gets through and gets a licence and he is a lemon it kicks back on the industry a year or so later if he prangs. That is our biggest problem.

So our attrition occurs at first solo. If there are guys who are not going to hack it in a realistic time frame or cost frame above the minimum hours, we will not know until the solo stage. That is the earliest trend we would have on his performance in a- fairly controlled environment. We make sure he knows that in his case we are fairly happy with him but he must bear in mind that we will be reviewing how he is going at the solo stage. If he is going pretty well then we will give it to him straight. If he is struggling, we will say, ‘On this curve, you will be minimum hours plus 20 per cent – another two or three grand – unless you radically change. ‘ It might also require us to say, ‘Your ability is there but your attitude and personality do not make it conducive to your being a professional pilot in the helicopter game. We suggest you try Cessna 150s. ‘ That has happened on two occasions in three years.

JS: Out of how many?

TS: About 45 students. We have had to tell them we will not train them. That is very rare because most of the vetting has been done prior to starting.

JS: What sort of thing would make you say they should go fixed instead of rotary wing?

TS: Fundamentally, his awareness of his flying environment. That indefinable thing is called airmanship. Going into helicopters as a commercial pilot, with paying passengers sitting beside him possibly, he is going to be exposed to a much greater variety of jobs at any one time which he might not have been supervised in because the industry out there is not supervising new pilots very well in the helicopter game.

So we have to think that anything he might lack in the way of good supervision in the next two or three years after his basic flying course he can make up for by sheer airmanship. By not committing himself when he does not know what he is about.

The worst thing we could do is attract people into the industry by default who are not prepared to put everything into it that is necessary and are probably not suited to it.

The industry suffers severely and is currently suffering because of that problem.

JS: Even people who get through the course?

TS: I am talking about people who came through some time ago and are still coming through training. Two big problems we see is the lack of standardisation of training schools and a lack of standardisation of the departmental authorities responsible in the different regions for the standards of those schools. That is hurting us because it is very hard to build up a school’s credibility and reputation and stay cost-effective, because quality and the dollar do not work in hand in hand in this day and age, very successfully.

We have a product support requirement to a sales distributorship which is training. That makes it easier for us to cover our losses in training.

JS: So you make a loss?

TS: No. We have kept our head above water in training. It is a policy of this company that individual departments have to make it pay as closely as they can. But we see indirect benefits through training by way of the product support which ultimately would influence sales to some degree. Pilots going through the system somewhere will be buyers.

JS: What sort of problems do you have with longer-term pilots? You said there were problems with people in the industry not maintaining standards?

TS: It is just generally a problem. Any instructor will tell you that he would like to see the industry conducted at a more professional level, especially by way of the ongoing standards of pilots.

Right throughout the fixed-wing and helicopter industry there is a problem of the ongoing level of competency of the individual. It is hard to legislate for it. The department is ultimately responsible but how do they enforce a level, a capability, at any given time.

The industry tends to do it a bit through the associations around and just through word of mouth, especially in the helicopter field, because it is a small industry. If a guy is a bit of a lemon as a pilot, and there are one or two around, he has the entire industry up against him.

JS: What is the situation with military pilots? They do not start out specifically as a rotary wing pilot?

TS: The military guys come from the navy, Air Force or army and do a level of basic fixed-wing training, usually at Point Cook. From the army side, once they do an officer training course and are selected into the flying stream – and if they do not make the officer training course – I believe they can elect to get out rather than be tied down to some other corps, like infantry. They do their basic training then go on to advanced training where they select rotary or fixed wing. It is a bit of a political situation where they have a degree of ability to select and the army reserves a , degree of ability to choose. Somewhere in there, most of the time the guys are satisfied which stream they end up in.

JS: Is it an alternative for somebody coming to ·your school to join, say, the army, specifically to be a helicopter pilot?

TS: Most definitely. For some of these young fellows of 19 or 20 who come in, especially if they are balking at the cost outlay and if you think they can handle that military environment for a time, most certainly I would recommend they try for it. It is a magnificent training background.

They pay a penalty of being in a fairly orchestrated environment for a fair while. But they can come out six or ten years later with a wealth of experience behind them and not too old to use it. JS: Would they have a great deal of trouble converting to civil roles?

TS: They do not have any trouble transitioning, but that is not happening so much any more because they pay them quite a lot these days in the forces. It can be hard to equate that same pay level outside.

JS: What about the positive side of the industry?

TS: I am an eternal optimist when it comes to the general aviation helicopter potential in Australia. Right across the board as a general statement, I am very, very optimistic.

As an instructor here I get very disheartened at how some of the students are abused when they get their licence. That worries me a lot. I would like to see an association to prevent that. But the overall growth of helicopters in Australia is guaranteed. We are still a developing country that has a massive transportation requirement and when we have a fairly large cash inflow into the country we can afford to operate these large and sophisticated helicopters, right down to the one man, personal transport situation. The only stumbling blocks to this will be manifested in how the GA industry goes about achieving it. If they treat the department the right way, they will be given the right answers. At the moment there is a bit of a brick wall there. If they stop pranging helicopters the insurance premiums will go down and so they will be able to stay in business and have a bigger cash flow at the end of the financial year.

It is right up to the GA operator. Without a doubt, I see that because it is potentially so lucrative in the five year time frame, there will be guys who get by on default – operators who continue to operate – some of them amaze me at how they stay in business, the way they do their basic sums – but they will continue to get by because it is that lucrative.

There will be ups and downs as the fuel price goes up or the CPI forces cost flow-ons but overall helicopters get safer and better as technology improves.

JS: Where do you feel the helicopter is placed in Australia, in relation to the rest of aviation, compared to the USA, for example?

TS: If we doubled the number of helicopters in Australia right now we still would not be on a similar basis to the USA. They are much more oriented to transportation there than we are. But we have to remember we have only 14 million people and there are certain things that provide impetus to helicopters – the cattle boom and offshore oil exploration and the local TV stations, surf rescue, and ambulance work, industrial survey and now commuter – hundred-mile situation requirements. Perhaps IFR at night, and the light twin IFR helicopter is where Rex is getting quite serious about marketing.

On training, we like people to look at it as a long-term career. He will take the knocks for the first year or two but if he has his sights set on recovering costs over five years and then going on over a 20-year or more program, then a person will get job satisfaction.

JS: What happens to people after a private licence?

TS: A private helicopter licence is about as useful as a hip pocket on a singlet. It does not give him much capability unless he is an owner-operator.

JS: What is the difference in training cost?

TS: Roughly speaking it is a little more than half, bearing in mind there are different ways to achieve that.